Dec 20, 2009

Santa Ana, CA - December 20, 2009 - Veros Real Estate Solutions, an industry leader in enterprise risk management and collateral valuation services, has released its most recent update to its annual U.S. real estate market forecast, a report that uses advanced analytics and micro-market data to achieve highly accurate results. The company's VeroFORECAST product is utilized by economists, statisticians and business leaders all along the mortgage industry value chain as a key resource for forecasting and strategic planning. The regular quarterly update for December 2009 through December 2010 indicates some stabilizing of property value trends in markets of key interest and marked improvement in others that have been areas of concern.

"The Great Plains region and parts of the southwest continue to be the strongest areas of the country," says Eric Fox, Veros' vice president of technology. "This includes portions of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, South Dakota and North Dakota." Parts of California, an area of great concern over the last 18 months, are showing early stages of improvement, particularly in the more populated coastal regions, he notes. "A number of areas that were previously showing declines are now in the 'appreciating' category," he adds. "This is a welcome improvement, even though many of these appreciating numbers are only marginally above zero percent."

Projected Five Strongest Markets*

Wichita Falls, TX +5.4%

San Diego / Carlsbad / San Marcos, CA +5.1%

Midland, TX +4.8%

San Angelo, TX +4.8%

Lafayette, LA +3.9%

A general trend has been noticed in the weaker markets which is somewhat encouraging," Fox says. "Florida, Nevada and Michigan all remain on the list of weaker markets, but the larger-scale, double-digit price drops forecasted in recent years are no longer deemed probable in those areas. We are no longer expecting the large declines of as much as 15 percent that were widely anticipated as recently as last quarter."

Projected Five Weakest Markets*

Las Vegas / Paradise, NV -9.2%

Port St. Lucie / Fort Pierce, FL -9.1%

Atlantic City, NJ -9.1%

Orlando / Kissimmee, FL -8.3%

Flint, MI -8.2%

VeroFORECAST provides 12 and 18-month perspectives on the national real estate market and applies more than 50 critical decisioning factors in its forecast analytics to develop robust, reliable market trend predictions. Key factors range from interest and unemployment rates, inflation and housing inventory levels to an array of economic and geographic trends. Responding to demand for more granular research and increased accuracy, Veros engineered VeroFORECAST to be different from other reports, which may use broader, less specific methods and/or fewer localized data sources in their analytics.

Eric Fox explains. "To be of the most use, analysis needs to keep in step with where real estate decisions are actually made, and that is at the local level," he says. "That means getting down to more detailed levels of information to be as accurate as possible." To ensure their property forecasts are more meaningful and accurate, Fox continues, Veros segments forecasts by property type (single-family residence vs. townhouse/condo), by three distinct pricing tiers (upper, middle and entry-level) and by metro area, county and zip code. This specific combination of forecast attributes makes Veros' predictive offerings more comprehensive, granular and accurate, enabling better business decisions than other commercially available reports, according to Fox. "VeroFORECAST is intended to give users a competitive edge," he says, "and in today's market there is no substitute for accuracy derived from granular precision and solid analytics."

*Markets demonstrated are for residential real estate in major metro areas among single-family homes in the median price tier.